Free Novel Outline Template
Choose a structure, enter the length you are writing toward, and get the outline with every beat placed at the word it should land on. Copy it or download it — no signup, nothing sent anywhere.
The percentages are the structure; the word numbers are just that structure applied to your target length. Landing a few thousand words either side of a beat is normal.
What the Beats Mean
A beat is a moment the story turns, not a chapter. Two beats can share a chapter, and a single beat can take three. What the position tells you is proportion — how much book should be behind the reader when a turn arrives.
The most useful one is the midpoint. In a draft that sags, the midpoint is usually late or missing: the first half sets up, the second half pays off, and without a turn between them the middle becomes a corridor. If your midpoint is drifting past 60% of the target, that is worth looking at before you write further.
The other reliable signal is the gap between the low point and the climax. In the 3-Act shape those sit at 75% and 85% — roughly a tenth of the book to go from “everything failed” to “the confrontation”. When that gap stretches much wider, the ending tends to read as slow; much narrower and the recovery feels unearned.
Two Ways to Fill the Gaps Between Beats
The beats above are the skeleton. Most of a novel happens between them, and there are two common ways to plan that space — kept here from the longer guide this page replaced.
Scene by scene. Under each beat, list the scenes that get you to the next one, and give every scene a single line: who wants what, and what stops them. If you cannot write that line, the scene is not a scene yet — it is a transition, and it will read like one. A 90,000-word novel usually lands somewhere near 60–80 scenes, so expect five to ten between major beats.
By character arc. Write the protagonist’s belief at 0% and the belief they end with, then place the moments that break the first one. Those moments almost always want to sit near the structural beats — a midpoint that turns the plot but leaves the character unchanged is the most common reason a well-outlined draft still feels inert. Run the same pass for any character whose choices change the ending.
Neither method has to be finished before you draft. Outline the first act in scenes, keep the rest at beat level, and fill it in as the characters tell you what they are actually like.
Using the Outline Against a Real Draft
An outline is cheap to write and easy to abandon. The part that matters is what happens after 30,000 words, when the draft no longer matches the plan and you cannot tell whether that is instinct or drift.
ProseEngine draws these same four structures — 3-Act, Hero’s Journey, Save the Cat and the Fichtean Curve — as overlays on your manuscript’s own tension curve in Story Charts, so you can see where your actual scenes sit against the shape instead of guessing. The beats above are read from the same definitions the app uses.
If you would rather start from the manuscript than the plan, the Manuscript Analyzer gives you prose statistics for a chapter with no signup, and Scene Finder searches a finished draft by tension, quality score and 30+ other filters.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this novel outline template free?
Yes. Pick a structure, set your target word count, and copy or download the filled-in template. There is no signup, no email, and nothing is sent anywhere — the page builds the file in your browser.
Which outline structure should I choose?
If you are unsure, start with the 3-Act Structure — it is the shape most commercial fiction already follows. Save the Cat is the most prescriptive and suits romance and thriller; the Hero’s Journey fits quest and transformation stories; the Fichtean Curve drops the slow setup and works for thrillers, horror and shorter novels.
Where do the word numbers come from?
Each beat has a position in the story expressed as a percentage, and the template turns that into a word number using the target length you enter. A midpoint at 50% of an 80,000-word novel lands near word 40,000. They are markers to aim at, not rules — being a few thousand words either side is normal.
How long should my novel be?
Most adult commercial fiction runs 80,000–100,000 words; fantasy and science fiction often run longer, and category romance and middle grade shorter. Set the target you are actually writing toward rather than a genre average, because the beat placement is calculated from it.
Do I have to stick to the outline once I start writing?
No. An outline is a map, not a contract — most drafts move beats around once the characters start behaving like people. What matters is noticing when a beat has drifted far from its position, because that is usually where a draft starts to sag.